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A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Monday
Jan042010

The three missing images that I had to drop from the previous post

DateMonday, January 4, 2010 at 5:53PM

Okay - you would not believe it, but I have spent HOURS on this since I posted the previous, incomplete, post. It was incomplete, because the Squarespace upload feature would freeze whenever I tried to add in one of the last three pictures. I spent an hour going through all kinds of things - cache clears, page refreshes, browser restarts, computer restarts - all to no avail.

I sent a message to Squarespace support and two hours after that, making it three hours total wasted time to that point, they sent me a message telling me that my storage space was full and, in order to continue, I had to buy more.

So I set about to do so, but received a false and erroneous warning before I could complete the transaction. So I let Squarespace know, gave up and went to bed.

I did not believe the warning because it made no sense, but still I worried that if I proceeded, there was a tiny chance that something would go wrong. 

So, after eating a late breakfast, I again initiated a process with Squarespace to ensure that this would not happen. That process dragged out for over four hours.

Now, the transaction, which took maybe 30 seconds, is made, nothing of value was lost and I am once again able to upload pictures.

It feels kind of pointless to now finish up with the images that were supposed to complete the previous post, but, after going through all this, I will do it anyway.

I am too drained to write anything clever or intelligent.

So - above you see Margie feeding Kalib.

And here you see Kalib and his buddy Royce.

And here are the four of us, watching "Desperate Housewives." I hardly watch any TV at all, but, somehow I got into watching "Desperate" a few years back with Margie and then Lavina and I still do. As often as not, it is the only TV program that I watch in the course of a week, but I watch it anyway, because it has become a family tradition.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment6 Comments |
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Reader Comments (6)

Computers can be maddening, can't they! As for Desperate Housewives? I've never seen the show and I guess I won't. I've seen some real-life desperate housewives and they weren't pretty so I've never had a yen to watch the same on TV. lol. I never watch reality shows, either, as I figure my life has enough reality already!

January 4, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterWhiteStone

I'm sorry you had such frustration. I'm really glad to see Royce with Kalib again, so thanks for persisting.

January 4, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterCGinWI

I am laughing at the picture of Royce and Kalib. Not because of those two handsome fellahs, but because of the cardboard packaging next to Kalib. My grandson decided those were THE best thing to come out of the holiday season.
Three cheers for 2 year olds!

January 4, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterAlaskaGma

Royce seems so aware of you and your camera. Cats like any kind of attention, but try to seem aloof -- so when you have a cat watching your every move with that camera, you know he's digging the attention. And you have a lot of favorite pictures of the dear ol' guy, too.

(sigh) I don't have near enough pictures of my dear departed Tigger, but I do have one favorite -- taken through a screened window, it has the appearance of a Photoshop filter -- Tigger is sitting elegantly on the aggregate curving front sidewalk, framed by tall shrubs in the background and magenta flowered shrubs in the foreground. He might have been enjoying the blooming irises...

January 4, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterKarenJ

Whitestone - Computers can be maddening, but mostly it is Squarespace. Squarespace compounds the madness like no other program I have ever used.

CGinWi - One must always persist.

AlaskaGma - I agree.

Karen H - Sorry about Tigger. Believe me, I have been there. If you ever want to share the photo with me, I would love to see it.

January 5, 2010 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300

Guess what Desperate housewives is my fav on TV! Somehow Manu doesn't like it a lot and I have given up watching many shows from the moment I started living with him!!Thats life! I love reading your blogs..off-late as soon as I come to office instead of reading my official emails I start with a 10min session from this website and then my day begins... Thanks Bill for the awesome description of another world!!

January 6, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterSuji

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